To Ezra Pound (My Ezuversity).

Ezra Pound was an American poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry. He became known for his role in developing Imagism, which, in reaction to the Victorian and Georgian poets, favored tight language, unadorned imagery, and a strong correspondence between the verbal and musical qualities of the verse and the mood it expressed. His best-known works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his unfinished 120-section epic, The Cantos, which consumed his middle and late career, and was published between 1917 and 1969.

Pound as Wuz by James Laughlin

I may be the last survivor who knew Pound in his best years, in his prime. [...] I´d like to tell a Little about Ezra and Rapallo in 1934-1935 when a i was studyng in his Ezuversity.

The Ezuversity was an ideal institution for a twentieth-century goliard. First of all, there was no tuition. Ezra was always hard up, but he wouldn´t take any payment; the only expenses i had were renting a room and paying for my meals with Mrs. Pound and him at the albergo Rapallo, wich he called the "Albuggero Rapallo".

Pound and Heminway were devoted friends but Pound confided me, "the trouble with Hem is that he can´t keep two ideas in his head at the same time", Ez always spoke coloquial, that always the tone of his discourse; Pound was superb mimic and had total recall. He used five different accent [...] every class was a performance by an actor with many personae; his haming was part of this pedagogy.

The Ezuversity was peripatetic, Ezra was no didactic, as we walked he explained the Eleusinian Mysteries, about dromena and epopte, and went on to the bizarre theories you will find in the postcript to his translation of De Gourmont´s Physique del'amour.

The room where Ezra worked, the Pound had a small but beautiful penthouse apartment in one of the old buildings on seafront- was interesting. He had it well organized. So that he could easily find them, he hung his glasses and his extra glasses, his pencil, his pens, his sessors, and his stapler on string from the ceiling over his desk. I watched him working.

He would assault his typewriter with an incredible vigor. In fact, he had to have two typewriters, because one was always at the repair shop. Rapallo his home "I came here because i like swimming".

The Ezuversity florished because Rapallo was easy to reach, the disciples who came to hte Ezuversity at St. Elizabeths were a mixed group, Hugh Kenner, who wrote the most important critical book about Poud, "The Pound Era", Guy Daveport- the most brilliant avant-garde writer of his generation "tempus loquendi" (there is time for speaking there is a time to silent), Pound was born a teacher, even if not destined to be a profesor. He could not keep himself from teaching.

A great teacher presents verities and compares them so that students can judge for themselves.